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[Weaver]

While I was in bed asleep this morning, apparently there was a hen pottering around upstairs. It isn’t the first time there has been a hen up here, even in my bedroom. It’s not just Betty either although she may be a ringleader. If the house door is open then they will all be in straight away!

[burakkucat]

Could they be looking for a helpful feline companion, to catch and kill a rat? Perhaps they have become accustomed to eating fresh rat-meat . . .

[kitz]

haha... lovely to see true free range hens. 

[Weaver]

@burakkucat indeed quite possibly. The cats are a bit wary because they get pecked but now hens and cats just ignore each other.

When the hens are in the lounge or upstairs they peck at any bit of a crumb or fluff in the carpet, so they do the hoovering for us. Unfortunately they often leave a present so we have to clean up after them.

It seems now that the donkeys do do a good job protecting the hens now the hens sleep in the donkey stable. One of my neighbours keeps getting his ducks eaten, by predators which could be foxes. I’m not aware of reports of mink.

[Weaver]

Betty watching Sky news, because there are no rats to ‘catch’.

[kitz]

How hens do you have?   Do you get a lot of eggs..  and how long does it take Janet to go looking for them

[Weaver]

Janet has eight ‘Lohman Browns’. They are extremely fussy and exceptionally tame; they follow you around, run after you. A visitor named them ‘chicken mafia’. We lost ‘Lady’ our last Black Rock - who was the matriarch - a few weeks ago. We get eight eggs a day. Luckily this lot are happy to lay in the nest boxes rather than in random places like the previous birds.
—
Betty in summer house:



Beileag being very brave, with Betty the hen and Ciarán who is putting up with it all with remarkable reserve:



Janet was ashamed of this awful quality phone snap, taken with flash as the light was awful, but the moment had to be seized. I’m amazed that Beileag tolerated this, for fear of being pecked. But these new hens are just so gentle; they never do anything to frighten the cats by their actions. Somhairle was trapped in the summer house by a hen though recently; the hen was looking for something to peck at on the floor and Somhairle did not dare to come out of his corner as that required him to get very close to the hen.

[Weaver]

Janet found a hen roosting in the kitchen tonight, by the microwave, when it was dark outside. Janet heard the hen talking when she went into the kitchen; she picked her up and took her across the field to her home.

[kitz]

haha  hen house as opposed to hen houses. 

A friend of mine who moved to Wales now keeps chooks.   She takes rescues which were battery hens so they tend to be older hens but most of them do still lay but not necessarily on a daily basis.  I think she said she gets on average about 6 per day but it can vary quite a lot as some of them are now in twilight years.   She lets them have free roam during the day but I don't think they are quite as considerate as yours are when it comes to choice of where they do lay

[tiffy]

Don't you have problems with chook's wandering around the house, I've never heard of anyone who managed to successfully "toilet train" a chicken and from my youth I remember they were notoriously incontinent ?

[Weaver]

Yes, hens that roam around inside the house require cleaning up after. :-(

I don’t know there’s any way of toilet training them; I can’t even imagine trying.

It is this particular fussy breed; never known any birds like them, so ridiculously friendly.

[Weaver]

Betty was in my bedroom this morning, pecking around. Then she disgraced herself - went into the spare bedroom, jumped up onto the bed and did a splat on the throw that covers the duvet. She can get in because the house door into the garden is open and she has started to fly over the garden gate into the garden. Janet tells me that Betty will be thwarted if the wicker grill seen in the earlier photo is replaced; it blew away in a strong wind a while back. However, I think the evidence to the contrary is seen in that very same photo, where someone is seen sitting on top of this supposedly effective barrier; if she can fly up to the top of it then she is as good as in the garden. Shutting the house door into the garden would of course make sense.